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I only have 8GB on the Ubuntu system partition and I am running out of space, so I tried to move the /usr directory (which takes 6GB out of 8GB) to another partition.

I did not want to make a partition only for /usr, so I moved /usr to that partition and made a symbolic link named /usr.

When I restarted my computer, Wifi connection was lost, and Mozc Japanese Input Method did not work anymore. What is the problem with /usr being a symbolic link?

EDIT: I use Ubuntu 16.04, and both partitions are formatted ext4.

EDIT2: When I renamed /usr (in the same partition) and made a symbolic link to that directory, I also got the same problem, so I do not think mounting is the problem.

eivour
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    I don't know the answer, but why don't you resize the Ubuntu partition instead? – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Nov 06 '16 at 05:15
  • I agree with ^ and I don't know either, but, when you moved it, were all the permissions retained? What are the mount options on the partition? Does it mount at boot time? Is it in /etc/fstab? – Zanna Nov 06 '16 at 08:57
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    I can think of very many possible issues; look at your logs. – fkraiem Nov 06 '16 at 09:24
  • @GunnarHjalmarsson I made a mistake at installation time. I made the Ubuntu partition at the very last part of my disk, so I could not easily resize the partition. I thought it was easier to just bring /home and /usr out of the system partition. – eivour Nov 06 '16 at 13:25
  • @Zanna I copied the directory using tar(with sudo) and the permissions were copied together. I have put the partition in /etc/fstab. (I forgot to mention it but when I just renamed it in the same partition and put a symbolic link to that directory I got the same problem so I don't think it's a mounting problem(EDIT2)) – eivour Nov 06 '16 at 13:34
  • @fkraiem I remember I deleted logs because they were taking a lot of space. Maybe I can get some info there. Thank you. – eivour Nov 06 '16 at 13:37
  • @fkraiem Where should I look for the system log? – eivour Nov 06 '16 at 13:42
  • You seem to be doing a lot of weird things in order to save diskspace; just make your root partition larger, really. – fkraiem Nov 06 '16 at 13:46
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    Hi eivour, sorry that my comment won't be very useful for your problem, but if you're on a desktop system, I would recommend to go with a single partition when installing ubuntu. Nowadays, most user configurations are in home directory anyway, which makes it a problem when reusing the home partition after reinstall, if software versions do not match. I always go with a single partition using full disk, then I add an other disk for non system data, like music and movies, which I mount in dedicated directories in my home directory. – kik Nov 06 '16 at 13:46
  • @eivour you can but you do that by creating a mountpoint on another disk. And symlinking /usr/ probably would have it ending up in loops where cd points back to a dir above it. (oh in some systems like Hurd you can symlink /usr). – Rinzwind Nov 06 '16 at 13:46
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    Btw, an alternative to symlink: using mount -o bind /usr/foobar /usr/bin. This mounts a directory (foobar here) over an other (bin, here), and often solve problems when symlinking won't do. – kik Nov 06 '16 at 13:49
  • A final note (sorry for flooding comments): /usr/bin often isn't the biggest problem. Look at what is in /var, especially if you use databases like postgres, mongo, whatever. They usually are good candidate for extraction. – kik Nov 06 '16 at 13:51

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